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Feb 2012

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Ben Roethlisberger is our John Elway

In each of their first nine seasons in the NFL, John Elway and Ben Roethlisberger led their teams to seven winning seasons, six playoff appearances, four AFC Championship Game appearances and three Super Bowl appearances. The only difference between the two is that Roethlisberger is 2-1 in those Super Bowl appearances, while Elway was 0-3 in his first three. That could be attributed to Roethlisberger having a better defense in his early years than Elway did, but otherwise, their career arcs are strikingly similar.

However, between 1992 and 1995, the Broncos hit the skids, finishing with a combined record of 32-32, and missing the playoffs three times in those four seasons. The talent level on the team declined despite Elway still being in his prime, and people began to forget about him with the rise of QBs like Brett Favre, Steve Young and Troy Aikman, and the continued success of his 1983 QB classmates, Dan Marino and Jim Kelly. In fact, the Broncos drafted Tommy Maddox in 1992 as a potential successor to Elway.

The Broncos still had a talented core with players like Elway, Steve Atwater and Shannon Sharpe, but reinforcements were clearly needed. They asked Elway what he wanted, and he said he wanted a better offensive line due to all the physical punishment he'd been taking, so they signed Gary Zimmerman in 1993 and Mark Schlereth in 1995, and they drafted Tom Nalen in 1994. They also provided him some excellent weapons in 1995, when they drafted Terrell Davis and Rod Smith, and signed Ed McCaffrey.

In 1996, the Broncos bolstered their defense by drafting John Mobley and signing Bill Romanowski. At this point, Elway had a complete team around him again, and that was reflected in their records between 1996 and 1998: 13-3, 12-4 and 14-2, respectively, with two Super Bowl championships as the final reward. In the process, people remembered that Elway was still one of the premier QBs in the NFL.

Right now, the Steelers are in the same limbo that the Broncos were in between 1992 and 1995, with a franchise QB and a small core of players all still in their primes, but not much in the way of reinforcements. The same way the Broncos built their team around Elway, Atwater and Sharpe, the Steelers now need to build their team around Roethlisberger, Heath Miller, Lawrence Timmons and LaMarr Woodley.

The Steelers have invested heavily in the offensive line in recent years, so they're a bit ahead of the game compared to the Broncos during Elway's 10th season. The linemen are all young and inexperienced, though, so they'll need time to get used to working together with each other. This won't happen overnight, but it will happen over the course of the season. And LeVeon Bell won't have to be Terrell Davis in order to be productive and give the offense an extra dimension. All the offense needs now is a tall, physical WR, whether they draft one or coach up Derek Moye, and possibly another offensive lineman if one of the young ones doesn't pan out.

There also appears to be reinforcements coming on defense, with Jarvis Jones and Shamarko Thomas impressing coaches, and Steve McLendon and Cortez Allen stepping rather seamlessly into their starting roles. The secondary will need to be rebuilt as aging players are let go, so that could delay the team's progress for another season, but as long as the Steelers have another good draft in 2014, they should be a complete team contending for championships by 2015 at the latest.

Trading Ben Roethlisberger now would be tantamount to the Broncos trading John Elway in 1992. Could you imagine if they did that? They'd probably still be waiting for their first Super Bowl championship if they did. Instead, they committed to Elway and quietly stockpiled enough talent to give him a second wind and a victorious ride off into the sunset. For all that Roethlisberger has done for the Steelers, he deserves the same consideration. His favorite QB as a child was Elway, and his body of work is virtually identical so far, so let's hold on tight through the next rough season or two while the Steelers restock, and then watch Roethlisberger ride off victorious into the sunset like the guy who inspired him to be a QB in the first place.

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Aug 2013

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Originally Posted by DBR96A

In each of their first nine seasons in the NFL, John Elway and Ben Roethlisberger led their teams to seven winning seasons, six playoff appearances, four AFC Championship Game appearances and three Super Bowl appearances. The only difference between the two is that Roethlisberger is 2-1 in those Super Bowl appearances, while Elway was 0-3 in his first three. That could be attributed to Roethlisberger having a better defense in his early years than Elway did, but otherwise, their career arcs are strikingly similar.

However, between 1992 and 1995, the Broncos hit the skids, finishing with a combined record of 32-32, and missing the playoffs three times in those four seasons. The talent level on the team declined despite Elway still being in his prime, and people began to forget about him with the rise of QBs like Brett Favre, Steve Young and Troy Aikman, and the continued success of his 1983 QB classmates, Dan Marino and Jim Kelly. In fact, the Broncos drafted Tommy Maddox in 1992 as a potential successor to Elway.

The Broncos still had a talented core with players like Elway, Steve Atwater and Shannon Sharpe, but reinforcements were clearly needed. They asked Elway what he wanted, and he said he wanted a better offensive line due to all the physical punishment he'd been taking, so they signed Gary Zimmerman in 1993 and Mark Schlereth in 1995, and they drafted Tom Nalen in 1994. They also provided him some excellent weapons in 1995, when they drafted Terrell Davis and Rod Smith, and signed Ed McCaffrey.

In 1996, the Broncos bolstered their defense by drafting John Mobley and signing Bill Romanowski. At this point, Elway had a complete team around him again, and that was reflected in their records between 1996 and 1998: 13-3, 12-4 and 14-2, respectively, with two Super Bowl championships as the final reward. In the process, people remembered that Elway was still one of the premier QBs in the NFL.

Right now, the Steelers are in the same limbo that the Broncos were in between 1992 and 1995, with a franchise QB and a small core of players all still in their primes, but not much in the way of reinforcements. The same way the Broncos built their team around Elway, Atwater and Sharpe, the Steelers now need to build their team around Roethlisberger, Heath Miller, Lawrence Timmons and LaMarr Woodley.

The Steelers have invested heavily in the offensive line in recent years, so they're a bit ahead of the game compared to the Broncos during Elway's 10th season. The linemen are all young and inexperienced, though, so they'll need time to get used to working together with each other. This won't happen overnight, but it will happen over the course of the season. And LeVeon Bell won't have to be Terrell Davis in order to be productive and give the offense an extra dimension. All the offense needs now is a tall, physical WR, whether they draft one or coach up Derek Moye, and possibly another offensive lineman if one of the young ones doesn't pan out.

There also appears to be reinforcements coming on defense, with Jarvis Jones and Shamarko Thomas impressing coaches, and Steve McLendon and Cortez Allen stepping rather seamlessly into their starting roles. The secondary will need to be rebuilt as aging players are let go, so that could delay the team's progress for another season, but as long as the Steelers have another good draft in 2014, they should be a complete team contending for championships by 2015 at the latest.

Trading Ben Roethlisberger now would be tantamount to the Broncos trading John Elway in 1992. Could you imagine if they did that? They'd probably still be waiting for their first Super Bowl championship if they did. Instead, they committed to Elway and quietly stockpiled enough talent to give him a second wind and a victorious ride off into the sunset. For all that Roethlisberger has done for the Steelers, he deserves the same consideration. His favorite QB as a child was Elway, and his body of work is virtually identical so far, so let's hold on tight through the next rough season or two while the Steelers restock, and then watch Roethlisberger ride off victorious into the sunset like the guy who inspired him to be a QB in the first place.

Very interesting read. Hopefully the FO will go into "Rebuilding mode" and make some of the personnel and player changes necessary to make another "Run" before Ben retires.

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That's all fine well and good, however, the Steeler front office (Colbert), scouting department and Mike Tomlin haven't proven that they can evaluate football talent and draft accordingly, IMO. Proof of this are the 2008 and 2009 drafts, there are exactly 2 players out of the 16 chosen still on the Steeler roster and one of them is 7th round TE. These two drafts should be carrying the load for this team and allowing veterans like Roethlisberger (subpar last night), Taylor (who was awesome last night), Polamalu (who was very good last night) and Keisel (who was unbelievable last night) be the great pros that they are make plays.

The 2010 draft is only marginally better and only for two reasons Pouncey is a pro-bowl center and Brown is a steal in the 6th round and he's really a #2, but he has to be the #1 for the Steelers, other than that the draft is weak as well, a backup OLB (Worilds) and a #2 WR that should be a #3 WR (Sanders) in the second and third rounds.

The problem has been the drafting over the past 5 years. The Steelers were poised to make the transition and continue winning, but the players that were drafted weren't up to the task and now since they haven't developed into top NFL caliber players the Steelers are struggling.

Pappy

The referee said that you hit Brian Sipe too hard. Did you hit him too hard?
I hit him as hard as I could - Jack Lambert

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You and your 1970s loving ilk were told this was going to happen. That who's going to be the next scapegoat for a defense that doesn't make plays?

Arians is long gone, and yet the lack of turnovers from this "#1 ranked defense" is still a problem.

Arians' vertical offense isn't here to save them anymore. Now EVERYONE is finally starting to see what has happened with this defense in 3 of the previous 4 years.

We threw a ton of deep passes and had all of ONE 20 yard plus in the air pass with a good result. Sacks too likely wanted to go deep I KNOW that one where Ben KEPT eluding the defense only to STILL get sacked he was looking deep.

I saw PLENTY of attempts to go deep.....we got drops by receivers, misses by the QB, sacks, a fumble, etc.

ONE successful 30 yard completion on the last drive after a bunch of failures.

Dont dare call what we saw 70s football.

Cincy played wuss ball to in the first half, kept us in the game. You see the team that dominated us with the run in the second half? THAT WAS 70s style football.

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The Rooney's hiring their cronies and their kids is why they didn't win anything until Noll showed up.

Seems to me that Art II wants history to repeat itself.

I'm leaning toward II being the problem here. And I think Tomlin's caught up in this crap storm without much control. I wouldn't be against getting rid of II, Haley, and Colbert and keeping Tomlin and giving Tomlin some control to fix this. But that would take Tomlin getting Dan back involved in some way to help fix this thing.

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In case you haven't noticed? Since putting Ben in his place? This football team has 8 wins, and 10 losses.

That's not success. That's failure.

10 wins
12 wins
9 wins
12 wins
12 wins

Two AFC titles and a ring with Ben and BA. And because Dick LeBeau is beyond criticism Arians AND the success of this team, paid the price for it.

Ben doesn't have to run the show. But he needs to be treated better than this.

BA didn't win all those games. He had some help from a defense that pulled his sorry ass along for the ride. You can look at the defensive points ranking and tell how well the team did any in year because the offense was average at best. IF the defense drops below #1 or #2 overall in points they don't make the playoffs. People forget Ben wanted to throw it more when BA was here.

Try this numbers out:

9
20
12
12
21

That's the offensive point rankings during BA. Fact is that Ben's best offensive output was under Whiz. Does anybody realize that Neil O'Donnell in 1995 scored more points (407) than Ben ever has? And that's with all the rules now favoring the offense and BA and Ben can't even get 1995 levels. I'm not defending Haley. I'm saying BA was over rated and had huge issues scoring and huge issues in the red zone. People just forget that now.

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The ONLY thing that could happen is that Dan "re-assigns" Art II, and promotes his son, Dan Jr. ahead of him.

That's a long shot. Can you see Dan Rooney humiliating his son like that, even if it would be justified?

One big problem with the Steelers is there's too many cooks in the kitchen. Art II wants it one way, Colbert wants it another way, and Tomlin wants it another way from those two. One guy needs to be in charge and make all the decisions, and that guy needs to be a football mind. Art II, like most NFL owners, is NOT a football mind. If he doesn't trust Colbert and/or Tomlin, then he needs to fire them and put better people in their places, then stay out of their way.